


Caught In A Moment

by Mellaithwen



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Episode Tag, Episode: s03e12 The Sound of Drums, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-30
Updated: 2007-06-30
Packaged: 2018-02-19 04:15:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2374169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mellaithwen/pseuds/Mellaithwen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That touch, that memory, ignited within a lonely soul.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Caught In A Moment

**Author's Note:**

> I forgot to archive this along with the rest of my fic. Originally posted on livejournal in 2007...

 

.

 

Having lost control, the Doctor feels his knees buckle in front of the Master and thinks,  _hmm, this is familiar_ .

But he’s never fallen before, or rather, his Master has never failed to catch him. But it’s Martha who kneels beside the Doctor, with a comforting palm on his back. That calming touch she reserves for patients with delusions who need gentle cajoling to get back to their beds.

Old and frail and left to rot within white walls that don’t keep the monsters at bay that haunt them in their sleep and never let them be.

“The toclophane, what are they?” He rasps and feels a deep ache in his bones that he hasn’t felt in so long.

Saxon winds his finger around his ear and pretends he can’t hear the Doctor’s breathless voice.

“Who are they?” He tries again, body shaking, eyes strong.

Saxon reaches out, his hand spread wide. Four fingers and a thumb (this time) pressed across the Doctor’s unsteady chest. That touch, that memory ignited within a lonely soul. It makes his breath hitch. It makes both of them long for the past and the way it used to be.

When they weren’t the only ones left, but they were the only ones that mattered in those seconds, those moments. When time-travel was something to be achieved, and graduation was only a  _possibility_  for two rebels who kept breaking the rules within the academy. It was never a certainty, nothing ever was.

Except their touch and those seconds, those moments.

But that _moment_  that any other would take for granted makes the Doctor’s hearts skip a beat. Saxon feels it beneath his finger tips and his eyes close for a second, a tiny second.

As Time Lords they see every millisecond that passes as though it was a millennium. Every grain of sand in the hourglass is just as important as the last. The Doctor sees it, sees him. Pleasure hidden beneath heavy lids with eyelashes that spread upon new cheekbones like his hand on his Doctor’s heart.

“If I told you the truth, your hearts would break.” He says so gently.

  
_You would know,_  the Doctor says bitterly with eyes unchanged despite the age that now shows on his skin.

The Master knows all about broken hearts as he leaves them cracked and bleeding in his wake.

The Master knows all about broken hearts, having held them as they burst with their last beat.

The Master knows all about broken hearts, with his own not yet mended.

Broken from the moment the Doctor never returned to Gallifrey. The Master was forced to follow him across the galaxy. But when a Time Lord doesn’t want to be found, he has the space time continuum at his feet to hide in. After so much time passed, so many minutes, hours, days, weeks...

The Master went mad.

Loneliness consumed him and the anger wouldn’t go away. The fear that engulfed him twisted his memories, his feelings,  _his love_. Trodden and stepped on and discarded with each planet he passed by and found nothing. Suddenly he wasn’t looking for a happy reunion anymore. He wanted revenge, vengeance for his heart-ache. His unbearable pain that had never before reached such a scale.

And then to find  _him_  after so long, with others? With friends and family, when he, the Master, was left cowering in the dark, alone and afraid? It was betrayal, he convinced himself as he dealt the first blow on his dear Doctor so long ago. His first attack. And he kept attacking.

He regenerates and the first thought that enters his mind, always, is the Doctor. And  _pain_.

They don’t call each other by their real names anymore. The Master certainly doesn’t. He hasn’t in eons. Not since The Doctor first called him Master, has he dared to whisper a name.

Names give power. Names identify someone. With a name you can know their weaknesses; you can stop them if you use their real name. It’s personal, it’s intricate and explanatory. And it might just remind them of being young and when last they spoke as friends, allies and something much more.

No, that line has yet to be crossed.

*-*-*

_“Master?” His companion asks incredulously tearing his eyes away from the burning red sunsets across the mountains of solitude._

_“I like it already.” He laughs, pushing his fingers against the small sand dunes beneath his palm._

_“You can’t call yourself that. Not unless you have someone ruling under you.”_

_He grins mischievously and his companion smiles in return, softer than his own. Eyes alight and shining, he replies:_

_“Is that a challenge?”_

*-*-*

If ever their names should be spoken, they both know it will be followed by their ultimate death. No resurrection, no regeneration. Death at the end of the universe where time can no longer be. Where ticking clocks have long been nullified and the Tardis is left abandoned, wheezing in the smog and the fumes of a dying eternity.

And they will touch, and moments will pass and broken hearts will mend, but broken bodies will not.

_“If I told you the truth, your hearts would break.”_

The touch is gone and the hollow feeling is back. With a single knowing look, the emptiness returns, like a worm-hole weaving its way through his intestines. It eats away at the Doctor’s insides as Saxon stands by his wife and cackles over the horrors he has produced.

Martha saves herself, and the Doctor has one less life to lose by his own hand and music chimes in from speakers in the ceiling. Lucy’s feet tap to the beat and Saxon announces the end of the world.

The Doctor created this monster and in those seconds, those precious moments where they are close, within each other’s vicinity, The Doctor is forced to stare out of the window when all he wants to stare at is...

Time passes, and as hundreds die on the ground beneath, the Doctor can think of even less ways to save his friend. His... _Master._

It’s not his heart that’s broken anymore, it’s his mind.

The Master doesn’t want to be saved, and Saxon certainly doesn’t. The power of the never ending drums is too strong. The call to war and the need to redeem. His warrior status has not yet diminished, even if his planet has. He was resurrected for a reason. And though this time his first thought upon existing once more was a beating rhythm that never let him be, the second was  _Doctor._

 

**_-Fin_ **

 


End file.
